Rhythmic salsa - dance lessons for beginners

A bright incendiary salsa dance has been admiring the audience for many decades and inspiring professional dancers. Salsa has united in itself various directions of the Latin American dances both ethnic, and modern.

Learning to perform salsa to an energetic and uninhibited person can be simple, and at the same time difficult, because the movements of this dance unite many subspecies of Latin American rhythms. But since the main features of salsa are improvisation, the call of passion and body, even a beginner will feel confident on any dance floor.

Salsa - the history of live dance

Salsa is an artificially created dance that combines many Latin American styles and directions. In the performance of salsa one can trace the movements of such dances as mamba, cha-cha-cha, rumba, guaracha and others. At first salsa was danced in a fairly calm rhythm, melodic and romantic, but today it is filled with dynamic movements that can create a complex and beautiful tact.

Despite the fact that salsa is a Latin American dance, it was first danced half a century ago in the United States of America. In the 1970s, Cuban emigrants and Puerto Ricans who inhabited the neighborhoods of New York began to dance salsa, merging into whole groups of interests. Although for all this time, salsa and fell in love with many, she for a long time had the status of folk or, so to speak, social dance. And only in 2005 in Las Vegas, the World Salsa Championships was held, where salsa performers competed for the first time.

Salsa dance step by step

Before you start studying the dance itself and watch a video lesson for beginners, we advise you to get acquainted with the theory of salsa. First of all I would like to talk about the types of this dance.

Although salsa is performed specifically in each region, acquiring the rhythms inherent in it, there are still two main types of salsa. The first is a circular salsa, the second is a linear salsa. Circular salsa is special in that it has its own geometric image of the dance - a circle. It includes such subspecies as salsa casino (Cuban), Dominican salsa and Colombian. Linear dance or, as it is also called, cross-body style is performed along the line, and its main subspecies are salsa Los Angeles (LA), salsa New York (NY), salsa London and others. Despite such a clear classification of species and subspecies of salsa, it is worth noting that some of its performance styles still overlap.

Compare the two types of dance to the video - Los Angeles salsa and casino salsa.

LA


Casino

Salsa can be either a group dance or a pair dance. The main movement of salsa, if you do not take into account the characteristics of each style of dance, consists of 8 parts and 6 steps, that is twice from fast-fast-slow steps under 4 percussion musical rhythms. If we combine such two musical cycles, then we get the basic step of salsa - basicstep. In other words: for every 4 measures (bills) the dancer performs 3 steps. By the way, in salsa, the step is considered as the transfer of body weight and this is a very important point, because only when you transfer the correct weight during the performance of the dance, you can achieve integrity and harmony in salsa. So, in the style of Los Angeles, the partner steps on the score 1 forward with his left foot, as if pushing back the partner's left foot, that is, the dance starts at a strong share. Puerto Rican and Salsa Palladium begin already at the expense of 2, and such species as Cuban salsa, Colombian or Venezuelan can dance to both parts of music.

There are also several types of accounts in the dance process. The most common is when they think so: one-two-three-four; five-six-seven-eight. The second account for popularity, in which pass "steps in place": one-two-three; five-six-seven. In addition, every school of salsa and its teachers are developing new and new methods of teaching dance, sometimes using their own individual approaches in calculating rhythm and steps.

If you consider the basic movement of salsa step by step, then it may seem complicated, but repeating it several dozen times, you will understand that in fact this is one of the simplest movements. Further study of the rhythms of salsa will convince you also of the fact that this movement is one of the easiest.

So, visually imagine that you are standing on a sheet of paper in a box just at the junction of the line between two rows of cells. The top row is your steps forward, the bottom row is back. Steps should not be wide or sweeping. Each of them is approximately 30-40 cm.

Getting started with basicstep

  1. From the standing position (legs at a distance of 10 cm from each other), the left leg is set forward - we take the first step. Be sure to move the body weight to this point.
  2. Then with all weight we move to the right leg, and the left foot in the meantime we put on 5-7 sm below the right.
  3. We stand in this position for a couple of seconds (score 4) and proceed (to score 5) to take the steps back. We set the right foot back at 30 cm - and it will become the center of gravity of our body.

Then carry the weight on the left leg, and put your right foot to it. So we returned to the starting position (score 8).

Salsa: video lessons for beginners

Now let's look at salsa performance with a video lesson for beginners. In addition to the basic movement, the basic movements of salsa include another "step back" and "step to the side." They consist of all the same 6 steps, performed on 8 musical bars, just the body will move not according to the usual pattern back and forth, but slightly in other directions. You can dance these steps both with your partner and yourself, or you can even arrange a group dance consisting of several dozen people. Refined movements for live Latin American music always look sexy and attractive, where and whoever performed.

We have already mastered the basicstep step, now we proceed to the next step-back step. The peculiarity of this movement is that all steps are performed only in the direction of the back, with both the left and right foot. In addition, when stepping back, we put a foot and transfer the center of gravity of our weight to the level of the opposite leg.

"Step to the side" visually at a fast pace resembles a kind of undulating movement. It is simple. From the initial position, you alternately carry your weight to the left or right side, and returning to the starting position (at the expense of 4 and 8), you seem to make a light wagging the hip, which resembles a movement under the generally accepted name "wave."

In this video, a professional salsa teacher demonstrates three basic movements of salsa - basic, step back and step to the side. Pay attention to how much the body movements change if you connect your arms or shoulders to the steps. Light circular movements of the shoulders make salsa more mischievous and clockwork. Be sure to remember about the upper part of the trunk and do not forget to move the whole body: Latin American salsa is the language of the whole body, and not the learned movements of the legs.

As you can see, all the movements are quite simple. Now you just need to work them out to automatism, and very soon you will forget about the technical side of salsa, and you can enjoy the beauty of this Latin American dance.

Well, if you do not like salsa, in our review of Contemporary Dances, you will surely find the dance that inspires you not for one year!